Expansion & Contraction
“Your hand opens and closes,
opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralysed.
Your deepest presence
is in every small contracting and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birds’ wings”
Recently, I’ve been reminded of this Rumi poem several times while teaching.
We’ve been focusing in classes on the experience of expansion and contraction in our whole posture, where expansion equates to backbends, extending out through the limbs, etc., and contraction is found in poses like forward folds.
A yoga practice mirrors the life cycle: Child’s Pose is essentially a fetal position, reminding the body and soul of those first 9 months of life in the womb; savasana, which translates to Corpse Pose, is the final rest at the end of class, preparing the body and soul for the full release at the end of life.
Neither state is better or more desirable than the other, and both lose their meaning and purpose without the opposite.
Strength without flexibility limits our range of motion and creates tension and pain. Flexibility without strength leaves joints vulnerable and the body weak.
Balance is not a static state. It’s the constant interplay of expansion and contraction: the process of feeling where you are on that spectrum and adjusting back to center.